Lou Reed has turned film director, shooting a documentary about his 99-year-old relative. Red Shirley, which also features original music by Reed, will premiere at the Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland.

When we heard Reed was making a documentary (via TwentyFourBit), we assumed it would be about Andy Warhol or noise music. Instead, this 28-minute film focuses on Reed's cousin, Shirley Novick, on the eve of her 100th birthday. An "affectionate and moving portrait", the movie doesn't just look at Novick's life today, but listens to her stories from the past.

"We learn that she left Poland on her own in 1938 at the age of 19," according to the programme notes, "with only two suitcases and a few dollars in her pocket to travel to Montreal – where in six months she was to learn not French but the mandolin! – before finally slipping off illegally to New York, buried under the goods on a truck. There she was to become a dressmaker and to lead the workers' demands – hence her nickname Red Shirley, which gave the film its title."

Reed made the film with art photographer Ralph Gibson, completing it earlier this year. The trailer features a combination of old photographs and intimate conversation – with Reed appearing on screen, laughing with his cousin. In an interview with the Independent last year, Reed also revealed that he wrote the soundtrack, which was recorded with his current touring group, the Metal Machine Trio.

Red Shirley will have its first screening on 20 May, to be followed by a reading of Reed's poetry.